MySpace Drops Out Of Top 10 In The UK

January 6, 2012 By

The latest spate of redesigns and rebranding efforts has failed to help lift the fortunes of Specific Media owned social networking site MySpace. The site has slipped out of the top 10 most visited social networks in the UK for the first time. This will come as a further hammer blow to the website that was the most visited social network for three years in a row.

When it comes to social networking, MySpace is one site that can claim to have helped start the phenomenon. Launched in 2003, it was the most visited social networking site in the world between 2005 and 2008 but since then it has endured a steady slide down the rankings. As sites like StumbleUpon, which has grasped that tenth place spot away from the music site, have improved their fortunes with a series of redesigns and improvements, MySpace has only been able to watch in envy.

News Corporation Sells up

2011 saw another change of ownership from the site with News Corporation selling to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for $35m; just 6% of $580m that Murdoch backed News Corporation paid for the site in 2005. The site lost a lot of followers over spam problems while competitors have arrived in the shape of social networks like Facebook and social media sharing sites like YouTube. Both have gone on to enjoy improved ratings compared to the former heir to the throne.

MySpace has, until now though, managed to hold on to a top 10 place in the list of most visited social network sites in the UK. However, according to Hitwise statistics, this is no longer the case and the former giant has been replaced by StumbleUpon, a site which describes itself as a discovery engine and has undergone radical changes of its own.

The decline of MySpace traffic has been monumental over the past 3 years. It held around a 6% share of social networking traffic 3 years ago, compared to the most recent 0.31%.

With all of that said, if you are embarking on a social media campaign then you need to choose your websites carefully and well. MySpace does still have a strong following and it is highly probable that more changes are afoot. Being owned by Justin Timberlake would imply that further musical direction will be introduced, too, so the site could still benefit those that target a young, music loving crowd.

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing

Rupert Murdoch Joins The Twitter Elite

January 4, 2012 By

When it comes to listing famous names that you’re unlikely to see on Twitter, Rupert Murdoch would feature at the top of virtually everybody’s list. The head of News Corp is well publicised for his loathing of digital media despite, or possibly because, of his $580m purchase of MySpace a very brief time before Facebook tore it apart in terms of popularity. However, December 31st 2011 is the date that Mr Murdoch officially took to Twitter arguably in a bid to repair his tarnished reputation.

As you would imagine from a man that is so anti-digital, his Tweets leave a lot to be desired although the poor grammar and Twitter faux pas do at least indicate that the account is indeed managed by the media mogul himself. How long this will be the case remains to be seen.

There have been little more than two dozen Tweets so far, with the very first coming just hours before the end of 2011, and they have been a mixture of Tweets raving about Fox movies and showing off a seemingly insatiable love for reading along with political messages and a few erroneous Tweets to boot.

Digital Murdoch

The move has sparked several rumours. Many believe that Murdoch is embracing the digital revolution in a bid to save a reputation that has become seriously damaged in the past months. The man that was once seen as virtually untouchable has been shown to be entirely human and while his early Tweets perhaps further accentuate this fact, it is likely that they will improve over time.

Is investment imminent?

Another rumour is that the businessman is looking to invest heavily in the microblogging platform, or even acquire it wholly although following his lack of success in the acquisition of MySpace the latter, at least, seems highly speculative.

@rupertmurdoch is a major deal especially for Twitter. Not only does the account, which already has more than 100,000 followers, have the blue tick to show it’s a verified account but it even warranted a personal introduction from the site’s co-creator Jack Dorsey.

Not that the blu verified tick means much, of course, especially following the news that the blue-tick verified account supposedly belonging to Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng has been exposed as a spoof and removed from the site.

Filed Under: Industry News

Use Social Bookmarks To Get Your Website Indexed

January 2, 2012 By

Before your website can hope to enjoy top rankings it needs to be featured in the search engine indexes in the first place. This means finding a way of letting Google and the other engines know that your site is online and that you have quality content that is ready to find its way into their directory. One such method is social bookmarking, and getting social bookmarks for your website can also provide a means to start your marketing while getting indexed quickly.

Search Engine Indexing Frequency

Search engines visit websites as often as they believe they need to. Spiders may initially visit every few weeks and if they notice new content has appeared on the site every time they visit they will increase the frequency they turn up. As such, if you’re looking to get your site indexed very quickly then you should get a link from a website that is updated often.

Social Bookmarking Websites

Social bookmarking websites enable you to add a list of your favourite pages, including some of your own. You can also tag them, rate them, and often even talk about them with other members. Ensure that social bookmarking sites you use are search engine friendly and you can get your site listed quickly and positively.

Filed Under: Social Bookmarking

Choosing An SEO Friendly Domain

January 2, 2012 By

There are many factors to consider when first establishing your website or online business. You will, of course, need a name and some way to make money from your ventures. You will also need traffic and a domain name can assist not only in your SEO but in other areas of your business too.

Keywords In Your Domain

If you operate in a relatively small niche area then you can look for an exact keyword match domain name. This is a domain that is made up of your primary keyword or search term. They can be difficult to come by but for keywords without too much competition they can be highly beneficial.

Dot Com Or Local Top Level Domain

Generally speaking, global websites are best served with a .com top level domain. However, if you will be embarking on a lot of local SEO then you should consider a .co.uk or other locale based top level domain because this will help the search engines easily determine where your website is based.

Easy To Remember

Your domain isn’t reserved solely for the benefit of SEO. Making your domain name easy to remember means that visitors will be more inclined to come back to your site. This also has SEO benefit because other webmasters will be more inclined to remember your domain when posting a link to it.

Filed Under: SEO

Should I Be Tracking My Own PageRank?

December 30, 2011 By

PageRank is a very beneficial method of calculating the value of a link or working out whether it is worth chasing a guest blog spot from somebody else’s blog, but it is one of the least important measures of your own website’s success. There are considerably more important statistics and data sets that you can measure and track in order to ensure that you’re enjoying the best possible results for your efforts.

Measuring Your Online Success

Your own online success is measured and determined by a number of factors. The number of visitors you receive and how well targeted they are, as well as figures like your conversion rate, average sale value, and bounce rate are very important. A good website owner or SEO will be tracking at least some of these figures to ensure that they are getting the best possible results from their SEO.

Google PageRank

Google determines the PageRank of a page according to the number and quality of links that page has. It cannot include relevance to a particular topic and it doesn’t include quality of page content or other important factors. By all means, check your PageRank every now and then and use it to determine whether it is worth chasing a particular inbound link but concentrate on more important statistics for your own website.

Filed Under: SEO Strategy

Getting Indexed Using Social Bookmarks

December 29, 2011 By

One of the first stages to an SEO campaign is ensuring that your website and all of its pages are being properly indexed by search engines. The likes of Google deploy spiders, which are basically small pieces of software that follow links from one page to the next, in order to find new web pages and then include them in their own search index.

Getting Indexed

This means that getting a link from a website that is crawled regularly will help you to get your website indexed. Before a site is in the search index, it is impossible for it to get a good ranking. Fortunately, where it used to take months of submissions directly to Google and to the DMOZ open directory project, there are much quicker and more effective ways to get a site indexed while also starting your link building campaign early in the process.

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites are updated regularly and this means that the Google spiders visit frequently. Getting a link from such websites can see your own pages indexed in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks. You do need to ensure that the links are dofollow, however, otherwise the spiders will be unable to follow the links.

Filed Under: Social Bookmarking

Ensure You Get High Quality Links From Your Link Building Services

December 28, 2011 By

Using a professional link building services can provide you with the inbound links that you need to ensure a successful SEO campaign and to propel your websites to the top of the search engine rankings. However, it is important that they use ethical methods of building links to provide you with good quality, long lasting, and beneficial one way inbound links.

Ethical Link Building

When embarking on a link building campaign, you need to ensure that any link service is providing you with ethical techniques. The search engines demand that you use only ethical techniques and if you don’t then you face the very real danger of having your website penalised and your pages pushed back into the supplementary index or, worse still, completely removed from the index. Check the techniques that your link building service are using are ethical.

Manual Submissions

Many forms of ethical link building require a submission stage. Whether it’s directory submissions or the submission of articles, press releases, or social bookmarks, these should be done manually. Not only does this ensure that these techniques remain ethical but it also means that the submissions have a greater chance of being accepted by the various directories and that the links provided are better quality and more numerous.

Filed Under: Link Building

Do I Need To Worry About PageRank?

December 27, 2011 By

PageRank has enjoyed a long relationship with SEO and, in particular, the webmaster and SEO boards that are found all over the Internet. In reality, the actual benefit of PageRank lies away from measuring the value of your own website and is more closely associated with measuring other websites. There are more important benchmarks to consider for your pages, including search position, traffic levels, and conversion rates, but you won’t have access to this kind of information when you’re looking for high value link pages.

Your PageRank

When you’re considering your own web pages you shouldn’t get caught up in whether you have a PageRank 2 or a PageRank 6. As long as you hit the top spot for your most important keywords, the PR that you have is not important. Look at ways to develop links, optimise your content, and create a larger list of leads instead.

PageRank As A Measuring Tool

One occasion when PageRank may be considered important, though, is when you are looking to attract links from other pages. Those pages with a higher level of authority or trust from the search engines will provide you with greater benefit when they link to your site, and PageRank is a reasonable measurement of authority as seen through the eyes of Google.

Filed Under: SEO Strategy

Choose An SEO Friendly Domain

December 26, 2011 By

An SEO friendly domain can help you to promote your website in a number of ways. The use of keywords in your domain means that you will be able to rank well for some of your more niche keywords. Using keywords also means that, should people to choose to link to your site using nothing but your website address, you will still have keywords included in your link.

Keywords

Keywords are a vital part of an SEO campaign and you should include them in your content and throughout your pages. You will also use these keywords when building links because they help to improve your targeting and help ensure that when traffic does arrive at your website, it will be made up of leads who are not only willing but anxious to proceed with purchasing or move on to the next desired step in the money making process.

Memorable And Easy Domains

Using memorable domain names is important on many levels and not just for your SEO campaign. Hopefully, your website and other publications will make a positive and lasting impression and if your URL is easy to remember then this means you will win repeat custom. If other webmasters want to link to you they will find it easier to remember your URL too.

Filed Under: SEO

Are You SEO Outsourcing?

December 23, 2011 By

SEO outsourcing is a viable and beneficial means of getting your website ranked at or near the top of the search engine results for your chosen targeted keywords. Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon and businesses have been doing it for many years with great success. It means being able to benefit from highly skilled professionals without having to pay their salaries or the overheads associated with paying for a full online marketing team.

Why Outsource?

There are a number of benefits to outsourcing any task or routine. It means that you can concentrate your efforts more closely on the daily tasks associated with running your business, and it also means that you can save money when compared to employing a team of SEO professionals and putting them to work on a range of tasks.

The Benefits Of SEO Outsourcing

SEO is still a developing industry, although there are more skilled SEO professionals today than ever before. However, it can still be difficult to find local candidates for SEO posts and many companies struggle to understand how best to judge a person’s SEO abilities especially if they have not yet employed any SEO techniques or used any optimisation services themselves.

Filed Under: SEO
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